General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIdaho Botched Its Pandemic Response. Now It's Begging Neighbors Like Washington State for Help.
Congratulations, America. The pandemic now has states yelling at each other, and that always ends well. Let us take, for example, Idaho, a state that is like the nations attic in which we store all the crazy uncles and aunts. Idaho is one of the most hardcore Live-Free-and-Die states in the union. Back in March, a bunch of parents brought their kids to the steps of the state capitol so they could all burn their masks on local TV. (Used to be all you needed to do was build a decent soapbox derby car.) This owned the libs all the way into Oregon. Of course, now Idaho is foundering in the trough between the second and third waves of the pandemic, and it has decided to depend on the kindness of strangers. From CNN:
"It's terrible. I don't know if people understand the gravity of the situation," Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the Washington State Hospital Association, told CNN Thursday evening. "This is not something that should be happening in America at this point. Sauer says hospitals in Washington are getting more requests to take patients from overwhelmed facilities in Idaho. In some cases, sick Idahoans are simply driving themselves across the border seeking treatment. "The fact that it's not causing severe alarm in Idaho is shocking to me," Sauer said. "In a normal time, our hospitals would accept almost every transfer request. They're accepting some, but they're declining more now.
You try at this point not to be cruel and unfeeling, but if I were a heart patient in, say, Spokane, and I couldnt get a bed for my mitral valve surgery because all the ICU slots were taken up by COVID patients from a state run entirely by conservative Republican morons, Id be pretty frosted, actually. Meanwhile, Idaho has decided to face the crisis by developing wait for it death panels!
Under the Crisis Standards of Care declaration announced Thursday, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said, "The massive surge of Covid-19 patients has exhausted the supply of staff, available beds and necessary resources to adequately address the increased demand for healthcare services. The declaration is a decision of "last resort," Idaho's health department director, Dave Jeppesen, said earlier this month. It moved Idaho Gov. Brad Little to plead for eligible Idahoans to get vaccinated. "We have reached an unprecedented and unwanted point in the history of our state," the governor, a Republican, said earlier this month.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a37640992/idaho-covid-19-surge-send-patients-washington-state/
msongs
(67,199 posts)Delmette2.0
(4,143 posts)struggle4progress
(118,041 posts)By Shawn Vestal
Sun., Sept. 19, 2021
... Extremist members of Idahos Legislature are now trying to call a special session not to deal with the fact that the entire states hospital system is rationing non-COVID care but to gin up feverish, red-faced opposition to vaccine mandates that might help address the crisis ...
... More and more people are getting sick, no matter what your opinion of this fact. Hospitals are desperately overloaded and stressed, whether you believe it or not. The ICUs are full of people dying from a disease that many of them did not take seriously enough weve all heard the now-common tales from hospital workers treating people dying from a disease they dont believe in ...
Idaho has the lowest vaccination rate in the country, a thriving far-right movement that equates mask mandates with the Holocaust, and a statewide reluctance to do the two things that might arrest the pandemic: raise vaccinations rates and require masks in crowded indoor spaces.
Just last week, the Coeur dAlene School Board refused to adopt a mask mandate for kids in a town where the cases are running wild ...
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/sep/19/shawn-vestal-the-problem-is-the-pandemic-not-the-d/
captain queeg
(10,036 posts)Its conservative there, but N Idaho has had a reputation for a long time. Sounds like they havent changed. I cant remember the name of the group from Hayden Lake back in the 80s but they were in the news all the time.
EarnestPutz
(2,087 posts)captain queeg
(10,036 posts)Not that they were all gone by then.
struggle4progress
(118,041 posts)Sept. 18, 2021, 12:57 PM EDT
By Ja'han Jones
In Idaho, a doctor-turned-conspiracy theorist has been appointed to a powerful regional health board, demonstrating the depth of the states disinformation crisis.
Dr. Ryan Cole has referred to Covid-19 vaccines as needle rape and the clot shot, he has promoted unproven remedies like the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and he has falsely claimed theres statistically no efficacy in masks, On Wednesday, Cole reportedly said the "intrusion" of politics into physician-patient relationships "must end." Interfering with that relationship "may actually constitute crimes against humanity," he claimed.
Now, he will serve on an influential health board for the foreseeable future, at a time when Idahos health system is crumbling due to Covid. His appointment to Idahos Central District Health Board was ratified by seven out of 12 county commissioners in Idaho, who successfully placed him in a seat he will be allowed to hold until September 2026 ...
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/idaho-doctor-turned-conspiracy-theorist-power-state-reels-covid-n1279502
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,111 posts)TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)struggle4progress
(118,041 posts)BY MICHAEL HILTZIKBUSINESS COLUMNIST
SEPT. 17, 2021 11:09 AM PT
It may be recalled that one of the chief GOP arguments against the Affordable Care Act in 2010 was that it would institute bureaucratic death panels to determine, in the words of former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, whether someone was worthy of healthcare.
The claim was always pure fabrication. But something akin to death panels are a reality now, specifically in COVID-stricken, and deep red, Idaho ...
... a record 678 patients were hospitalized with COVID-19 in Idaho as of Monday, including 173 in intensive care and those almost certainly were undercounts. On Wednesday, the state said, only 12 adult ICU beds were staffed and available in the entire state ...
Only about 50.5% of Idahoans 12 and older are fully vaccinated, well below the national average of 63.3% nationally. Only Alabama, West Virginia and Wyoming have done worse ...
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-17/death-panels-republican-covid-stricken-idaho
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)WHAT ARE CRISIS STANDARDS OF CARE?
... Essentially, they spell out exactly how health care should be rationed in order to save the most lives possible during a disaster. ...
WHATS THE SCORING SYSTEM, AND WHAT ARE TIE-BREAKERS?
... Youth is the biggest tie-breaker, with children getting top priority. ...
DOES VACCINATION STATUS MATTER?
No. ...
WHAT ELSE CHANGES WHEN A HOSPITAL IS OPERATING UNDER CRISIS STANDARDS OF CARE?
Nearly everything. ...
https://apnews.com/article/business-health-public-health-coronavirus-pandemic-montana-4f68683b175340bf525c45aa133045ba
Very interesting.
halfulglas
(1,654 posts)Its unvaccinated citizens are DEMANDING the help from surrounding states. But not enough to get vaccinated.
roamer65
(36,739 posts)Taking their overflow is enabling them, just like giving a junkie money to buy more drugs instead of insisting that they get clean.
Kaleva
(36,147 posts)Surgeries for the repair of bone fractures are being canceled and doctors in Idaho are calling hospitals as far away as Texas and Georgia for a patient who doesn't have COVID but needs to be in a ICU.
A majority of the patients in the ICUs of local hospitals where I live are not infected with COVID but there's enough of the latter to bring the number of beds to near full capacity.
roamer65
(36,739 posts)ffr
(22,649 posts)"Meanwhile, Idaho has decided to face the crisis by developing
wait for it
death panels!" I understand some hospitals in Alaska are in the same boat too, choosing who has or has not a fighting chance.
What do you say to people that throw their germs in your face, your parents, your grandparents and your children's faces too, fully mocking all of you for masking and isolating for over a year? Then you see them flaunting it up on their big boats or screaming at shoppers at the local market, throwing parties without restrictions as if your family's health is at the bottom of their concern list. Who then get sick with the very thing you asked them to be careful of and now have to migrate across state borders to your state that's sacrificed to do right for their Commonwealth!
Meanwhile taking up a valuable hospital bed and one that is no longer available to anyone from your state. Callous and un-American would be the words I'd use for someone like that.
If they show up in Washington or Oregon with an Idaho license plate, have them wait outside, like their state would do if anyone from anywhere showed up at an Idaho hospital. And make sure to mock them while they ferment in their vehicles, like they would be doing to you, only worse, if rolls were reversed.
leftyladyfrommo
(18,816 posts)drug reaction. She got in ok.
My family all live in Spokane. They are all Democrats. Got vaccines and wear masks.
I don't know about everyone else.
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)Self deportation from the state seems like a great idea.
Roisin Ni Fiachra
(2,574 posts)unvaxxed covid patients.
If Idaho wants to send ICU patients to another state, the state receiving the patients should only accept patients who have been vaccinated. At least this way, responsible, thoughtful folks in critical condition won't be even more collateral damage from the actions of thoughtless, irresponsible unvaxxed maskhole covidiots.
The vaccinated person who needs heart surgery would take precedence over the unvaxxed covid spreader.